Our Verdict:
One of the wiliest punters on the online poker circuit is “thorladen”, a former Wall Street trader, who lives in the mountains 140 odd miles northwest of New York.
Apart from taking down tournament winnings of over $200k on PokerStars, a further $40k on UltimateBet, and $30k on Full Tilt, he is also a prodigious cash game player at the highest levels.
We describe him as the wiliest of punters because, perhaps true to his Wall Street pedigree, this guy loves to bet – the bigger the better too.
An example was when “Ozzy 87” aka “bigslick789” bet anyone who would listen that a player called GigaBet (Darrell Dickin in real life)PokerStars Monthly TLB (tournament leaderboard) back in August 2005. Thorladen said make it $100,000 and you’ve got yourself a deal.
When the bet was accepted Thorladen, with the help of other poker acquaintances including Noah ‘Exclusive’ Boeken and Carl “Colson10” Olson, set about trying to win the August 05 TLB themselves. They played as a team using the same account 24 hours a day and soon were in contention for the title. In the event they need not have bothered since another player, JJProdigy, won the TLB and with it the bet for thorladen and his partners, who had agreed to take part for a cut of the spoils.
Thorladen came late to poker late (in his late 30s) having started his card-playing career as a Bridge player. He has only been playing around four years so is still developing his game but it’s true to say he has made a big impact – as a cash game player, tourney player and prop bet maker.
Within a few months of starting to play poker seriously he became convinced he could turn $3k into $100k and proved it could be done on PartyPoker.
He puts his undoubted talent for the game down to the good grounding he received in making split second decisions for huge amounts of money while he was trading on Wall St. He also reckons the focus and concentration he learned from Bridge come in pretty handy around the online baize.
Despite being a relative novice himself thorladen has already taken on a couple of students, coaching them to play $1/$2 no limit holdem. He has strong opinions about the bankroll you need to play at certain levels.
In an interview with liquidpoker.net he said: “I believe that unless you have other money you can tap into without jeopordising your finances you must be very conservative. I will not let my current student move up to $2/$4 NL till he has $15k. And I think you should have $50k for $5/$10 NLH and $100k for $10/$20. If you do not practice correct bankroll management you are 99% to go broke at some point in your poker life,” he says.
Mental toughness is also high on thorladen’s list of attributes for successful players, although he doesn’t think you can learn to be mentally tough just from poker. “Patience and intelligence are from life experiences,” he says. .
He adds: “I believe that a strong ethical background is crucial in anything you try to do in life. It give